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Saturday 4 June 2011

A quiet weekend in Kampala

I'm enjoying another of Uganda's long weekends - it seems that barely a month passes without a day off for something or other. I believe Friday was Martyr's Day. I had to change my plans at the last minute as although I have more or less recovered from last week's unwelcome feature of 'Malaria Returns', I am still in no fit state for the 60km bike ride to Lake Albert that I had hoped to do. Especially since the planned 60km bike rides are notorious for turning into 80 or 90km epics!

Instead, I rose early on Friday morning and drove across town for a healing yoga session. Afterwards, I promptly undid the morning's good work with a yummy pain au chocolat from the Belgian patisserie. Apparently I should be avoiding wheat in order to detoxify my body. Sod that! I am a firm believer in 'a little of what you fancy does you good'. And anyway, I needed the energy for the big sunscreen hunt - 6 shops later and I found some. By the afternoon I needed a nap, but I'm not sure whether I was tired from the yoga or just exasperated by the fact that in a city with some 40 000 Muzungus (I may be plucking that figure from mid air, but am sure I've heard it before) it is still a mission to find sunscreen.

Today I headed to the LaBa Street Art Festival. It's one of those lovely Kampala events that brings everybody out . I enjoyed browsing through the art on display, mentally spending a few hundred dollars, but actually walking away with a few candles and postcards.

My day of culture continued in the evening at the National Theatre. Originally written as a radio play, The Cow Needs A Wife, is a Ugandan comedy about a man in a village who gets his girlfriend pregnant, so raises the cash to buy a cow for her dowry ... only for her to reject him. My favourite part was when they try to organise a highfalutin party and the biggest status symbol they can think of is hiring 60 white plastic chairs brilliant! Click on the link above for a listen - it had me and the audience giggling along!

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